After getting two d3 characters to lvl 60, coming back to d1 and hellfire, playing with every class and leveling them, now i fell like playing d2 again and try for the very first time the pvp system in it.

I love pvp in basicly any game i play, but i had never tried the pvp in diablo 2 before.

IÂ´ve been doing some research, and it seems the Assassin is the favored class for PvP.
It seems like a tank mage, with spells to stun and hold enemies, and very fast and powerfull attacks to finish them, basicly everything i like \o/

I made 1 and im loving it so far. I mostly favor the fastest class in game, like the Demon Hunter in d3, and the assassin is very fast in both walking and attacking (gotta love that Burst of Speed skill)

There are lot of builds, lots of terms and acronyms to get used to, and its all a little bit overwhelming, so i first wanna get some information to see if itÂ´s worth it to emerge in that imense new universe.

Since iÂ´ve never played d2 on battle.net before, only single player, only now is that i come to notice that you canÂ´t use your singleplayer character on blizzardÂ´s servers.

Instead you have to go to Other Multiplayer > Open Battle.net to use your singleplayer characters to play online with them.

So what is this open battle.net? Do the majority of players use it, or do ppl use the official Battle.net mode to play?
I just wanna know where is the best pvp happening in the majority of times.

Because, as i understood, if i create a character on battle.net, i canÂ´t play with it on singleplayer.
IÂ´d be okay with that, if it werenÂ´t for the fact that , unlike diablo 3, i can loose my bnet account and all the work iÂ´ve put into it if i donÂ´t log in for some while.

My intention is to make permanent PvP characters, that i can log in 1 year from now and play with them if i wanted to.

SO it seems the Open Battle.net option would be the most logical choice, since that way you can store your characters on your machine and nowdays also in some cloud service like google drive, so you NEVER loose them.
The downside is that it might allow more hacks that the other game mode.

Could some kind soul shed some light into the whole subject for me?
Thanks in advance.

1st - Open bnet NEVER a good idea for any kind of gameplay. Reason for this is that it is basically used as hackers or as serious players looking to test builds by importing "legit stuff" on their single player chars and testing it there vs other players with similar aims. So dont even think of playing open as even if you get the PERFECT pvp setup for a sin, you will die in 1 hit due to hackers.

2nd - Every1 plays in battle.net, and even though there is still some non legit stuff there its, for obvious reasons, not a problem and u can join public games safely without the fear of hacked characters. (even though there are hacked items in battle.net but not items that make u one shot any normally geared character

3rd - pvp in d2 comes down to gear with (some) button mashing skill which is quickly learned. The gear part is the tough one cause you'll see alot of players with shopped items making dueling with them imba in the first place. So you'll need to play ALOT in order to compete with those

4rd - an assassin is my character of choice as well as the points you mentioned are indeed amazing and alot of fun. However, keep in mind one thing. Apart from ww/kick (quite expensive to gear effectively), the main sin build for pvp is a regular light trapper with mind blast. The issue here is that any player with a stash will switch to ridiculously high light resistance (~95%) and add items that Absorb lightning damage. In the end, this means that your main attack will heal them. This is a huge issue for every class which relies on elemental damage. In this regard, physical attacks are better suited for pvp as well as purely magic attacks (such as paladin's blessed hammer or necros bone spirit).

This point however, can be somewhat circumstancial and i do duel in public games (and own with my sin) as long as these type of pvpers are not there. Regardless, its fun still

Keep in mind that it will take you along time to get up to par in terms of gear to be effective in pvp (considering how new you are to battle.net especially). However, IT IS FUN and you will meet people which will be fun to duel with

Another advice, go to the sin forums and see the different pvp builds (I would advise you to start with some sort of MF char (magic find) to gather gear before thinking about pvp).